Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes Poems

When we were girl and boy together,
We toss'd about the flowers
And wreath'd the blushing hours
Into a posy green and sweet.
...

To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore;
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
...

IF thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow
...

By heaven and hell, and all the fools between them,
I will not die, nor sleep, nor wink my eyes,
But think myself into a god; old Death
...

So thou art come again, old black-winged night,
Like an huge bird, between us and the sun,
Hiding, with out-stretched form, the genial light;
And still, beneath thine icy bosom's dun
...

6.

HOW many times do I love thee, dear?
   Tell me how many thoughts there be
   In the atmosphere
   Of a new-fall'n year,
...

Hark to the echo of Time’s footsteps; gone
Thise moments are into the unseen grave
Of ages. Thy have vanished nameless. None,
While they are deep under the eddying wave
...

IF there were dreams to sell,
   What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
   Some a light sigh,
...

Act I, scene iv, lines 259-72

The swallow leaves her nest,
The soul my weary breast;
...

Tis a moon-tinted primrose, with a well
Of trembling dew; in its soft atmosphere,
A tiny whirlwind of sweet smells, doth swell
A lady bird; and when no sound is near
...

IF thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love, and all its smart,-
Then sleep, dear, sleep!
And not a sorrow
...

Thread the nerves through the right holes;
Get out of my bones, you wormy souls.
Shut up my stomach, the ribs are full;
...

TO sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore;
...

Act II Scene ii, lines 26-55


A ho! A ho!
...

Yes, Mary Ann, I freely grant,
The charms of Henry's eyes I see;
But while I gaze, I something want,
I want those eyes -- to gaze on me.
...

Act IV, scene iii


A cypress-bough and a rose-wreath sweet,
...

Write it in gold - a Spirit of the sun,
An Intellect ablaze with heavenly thoughts,
A soul with all the dews of pathos shining,
Odorous with love, and sweet to silent woe
...

And in that rosy rosy hour,
When bird sang out and scented flower,
Came words to me from heaven above:
'Awake, young heart, awake and love!'
...

Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
...

STREW not earth with empty stars,
Strew it not with roses,
Nor feathers from the crest of Mars,
Nor summer's idle posies.
...

The Best Poem Of Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Ballad Of Human Life

When we were girl and boy together,
We toss'd about the flowers
And wreath'd the blushing hours
Into a posy green and sweet.
I sought the youngest, best,
And never was at rest
Till I had laid them at thy fairy feet.
But the days of childhood they were fleet,
And the blooming sweet-briar-breath'd weather,
When we were boy and girl together.

Then we were lad and lass together,
And sought the kiss of night
Before we felt aright,
Sitting and singing soft and sweet.
The dearest thought of heart
With thee 't was joy to part,
And the greater half was thine, as meet.
Still my eyelid's dewy, my veins they beat
At the starry summer-evening weather,
When we were lad and lass together.

And we are man and wife together,
Although thy breast, once bold
With song, be clos'd and cold
Beneath flowers' roots and birds' light feet.
Yet sit I by thy tomb,
And dissipate the gloom
With songs of loving faith and sorrow sweet.
And fate and darkling grave kind dreams do cheat,
That, while fair life, young hope, despair and death are,
We 're boy and girl, and lass and lad, and man and wife together.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes Comments

Subhas Chandra Chakra 01 September 2017

A great poem on love through different ages and stages. Highly enjoyable.

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Fabrizio Frosini 17 October 2015

as I had never heard of this poet, I searched through Google: Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803 – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician. Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama called The Bride's Tragedy (1822) , was published and well reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall. Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body.He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840. He continued to write, but published nothing. He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45. For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851. ABOUT HIS WORKS: Critics have faulted Beddoes as a dramatist. According to Arthur Symons, of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation. His plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same ideas that vexed Beddoes. But his poetry is full of thought and richness of diction, in the words of John William Cousin, who praised Beddoes' short pieces such as If thou wilt ease thine heart (from Death's Jest-Book, Act II) and If there were dreams to sell (Dream-Pedlary) as masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed. Lytton Strachey referred to Beddoes as the last Elizabethan, and said that he was distinguished not for his illuminating views on men and things, or for a philosophy, but for the quality of his expression. Philip B. Anderson said the lyrics of Death's Jest Book, exemplified by Sibylla's Dirge and The Swallow Leaves Her Nest, are Beddoes' best work. These lyrics display a delicacy of form, a voluptuous horror, an imagistic compactness and suggestiveness, and, occasionally, a grotesque comic power that are absolutely unique. [From Wikipedia]

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